This poem appeared on Garrison’s,“The Writer’s Almanac” today, for those of you who haven’t seen it, or heard it read on National Public Radio. My apologies for further dispatching it. But I couldn’t help myself. It’s too good not to share with as many readers and writers as possible.

Buy the book. Subscribe to the Writer’s Almanac and/or tune in to it daily on Public Radio.

U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins says that DENVER BUTSON’s “imagination unlocks for us the cells of reason and sets us loose in a world of dizzying possibilities.” Collins recently selected Butson’s poem “Tuesday 9:00 AM” to be included in Poetry 180, a grouping of 180 poems that will be read in U.S. high schools and published as an anthology, Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry by Random House in 2003.

Butson has published two books of poetry: triptych (The Commoner Press, 1999) and Mechanical Birds (St. Andrews College Press, 2000). His poems have also appeared in The Yale Review, Ontario Review, Quarterly West, Caliban, The Mid-American Review, tight, and Exquisite Corpse, among other journals. Late in 2000, three of his “drowning ghazals” were in Agha Shahid Ali’s anthology, Ravishing Disunities: Real Ghazals in English on Wesleyan University Press. Butson has work forthcoming in numerous journals, including FIELD, Contemporary Ghazals, SOLO, Crux, la petite zine, and Ontario Review, and in The Brink: Contemporary American Poetry, 1965-present.

During the fall of 2000, Butson served as Ezra Pound Visiting Writer at Brunnenburg Castle (Pound’s daughter’s home in the Italian Alps). In 1999, he was the first Ronald H. Bayes Resident in Creative Writing at St. Andrews College and the first featured poet on FOX News Online’s “Book Page.” Also in 1999, Joyce Carol Oates nominated his poem “Beauty or Flight” for a Pushcart Prize.

A frequent collaborator with artists in other media, Butson has worked with filmmaker Rhonda Keyser on her film an unpredictable thing (Solange Productions, premiere screening at The Williamsburg Brooklyn International Film Festival in 2001), with visual artist Maria Mercedes on The Cigar Box Project, with painter/sculptor Pietro Costa on Blood Works, which premiered in New York in 2001, and with Costa and photographer Cedric Chatterley on grace: for all the children, to be published in a bilingual edition in Italy in 2003. Recently, several of his poems were adapted for the stage by Keyser and performed at The Little Theater in New York, and film director Kevin Doyle transformed Butson’s poem “The Effigy Café” into a short film, which first screened in Manhattan in the No Idea film series. The interactive CD, Denver Butson: Solo Works and Collaborations (Digitram Productions, 2000) has won awards throughout the South, including a “Merit Distinction” at the 2001 Richmond Show and the “Silver Award” in Atlanta’s 2001ShowSouth.

Butson has read at St. Mark’s Poetry Project, Cornelia Street Café, the National Arts Club and KGB Bar (all in New York City), as an annually returning featured artist in St. Andrews College’s Writers’ Forum, and at other venues throughout the U.S. and Europe. In addition to Billy Collins, noted writers Jim Harrison, Edmund White, Agha Shahid Ali, W.S. Merwin, Thom Gunn, Ned Rorem, Forrest Gander, and Theodore Enslin have praised his work.

Butson earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from James Madison University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University, where he held the Richard M. Devine Memorial Fellowship.

BA IN ENGLISH. James Madison University. (Concentration in creative writing and general humanities; elected, Sigma Tau Delta, National English Honor Society, 1986.) Graduated, December 1987.

SEMESTER IN PARIS. James Madison University Studies Abroad. (Intensive study of contemporary Parisian artistic and literary culture; focus on American expatriates in Paris, primarily in the nineteen thirties.) Spring 1987.

publications

BOOKS

Mechanical Birds. St. Andrews College Press, February 2001. (Introduction by Edmund White; blurbs from Agha Shahid Ali and Jim Harrison.)

NONFICTION (including an interview with John Yau; an article on Delta Bluesman, David “Honeyboy” Edwards; and reviews) published in tight, Countermeasures, Lingo, Feedback, The Adjunct, and LiveWire.

ANTHOLOGIES

Over twenty poems published in the following anthologies Poetry 180: A Return to Poetry (edited by U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins for Random House, Spring 2003), The Brink: Post-Modern Poetry 1965 – the Present (Fall 2002); Ravishing Disunities: Real Ghazals in English (edited by Agha Shahid Ali for Wesleyan University Press, Fall 2000, major reviews in national and international sources, including an extensive positive mention in The Harvard Review, Spring 2001); and Ikons (a collection of poetry by “young Virginia writers” on St. Andrews College Press).

MULTI-MEDIA

Denver Butson: Solo Works and Collaborations: interactive CD-ROM featuring video footage, recorded readings, and collaborative text/image projects, produced by Eddie Williams for Digitram, winner of a “Merit Distinction” at the 2001 Richmond Show and “The Silver Award” at Atlanta’s 2001 Show South.

collaborations

Numerous collaborations include Blood Works (a book project with visual artist Pietro Costa, to be published in a limited edition artist book by Raphael Fodde Editions, 2003); grace: for all the children (a collaboration with photographer Cedric Chatterley and Pietro Costa, to be published in a bilingual edition in Italy in 2003), The Cigar Box Project (a series of poems and drawings in collaboration with visual artist Maria Mercedes); Metal Words (collaborative works with sculptor and furniture maker Greg Hershey); The Effigy Café (a short film based on poem of the same name directed by Kevin Doyle); and an unpredictable thing (a short film written by Tom Noonan and directed by Rhonda Keyser).

readings

Over one hundred readings in the U.S and abroad, including readings at the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York City, The National Arts Club, Brunnenburg Castle in Italy, and Foyer Centre International Quartier Latin in Paris.

film and stage

SCREENWRITER: The Effigy Café, a short film by Kevin Doyle (Premier Screening, No Idea Bar Film Series, New York). 2001.

CREATIVE CONSULTANT: an unpredictable thing, a short film by Rhonda Keyser (Premier Screening, 2001 Williamsburg/Brooklyn Film Festival). 2001.

WRITER/DIRECTOR: Three Short PoemPlays (The Little Theater at Tonic. New York). April 2000.

COURSES
CREATIVE WRITING courses include 20th Century World Poets; Beginning and Advanced Poetry Workshops; Beginning and Advanced Fiction Workshops; Nonfiction and Memoir Workshops, Creative Writing Project Management and Discipline, online fiction and nonfiction workshops; intensive one-day workshops; Craft of Poetry; Writing for Young Writers. Have also worked extensively with individual writers in the capacity of consultant, editor, coach, and project manager.

LITERATURE courses include Contemporary World Poets; World Poetry of the Twentieth Century; Writers and Collaboration; 20th Century European Poets; Western World Literature (from the Ancient World to the Enlightenment and from the Enlightenment to the Present); and American Literature from Realism to the Present. Have also worked extensively with individual students and reading groups on directed readings of poetry and prose collections.

COMPOSITION AND RHETORIC courses include Advanced Composition; Composition and Rhetoric; Varieties of Writing; Honors Composition and Rhetoric; General Writing Problems; Rhetorical Skills; and Special Topics in Composition (with concentrations on issues of obedience and authority, gender and language, race and language, and film study and writing). Have also worked extensively with individual writers on a variety of writing projects.

other Norbert Blei web pages

Please click the arrow to see the complete list of writers on Poetry Dispatch & other Notes from the Underground, then click a writers name to see all entries. The number next to the writers name indicates how many postings belong to this category.

Please click the arrow to see the complete list of writers on Poetry Dispatch & other Notes from the Underground, then click a writers name to see all entries. The number next to the writers name indicates how many postings belong to this category.

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Norbert Blei | 1935 – 2013

On the back roads of Door County again

Norbert Blei – 2012

Photo by Bobbie Krinsky

Norbert Blei – 2012

Photo by Jeffrey Winke

Norbert Blei – 2011

Photo by Sharon Auberle

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